"Mr. Coyle," Kling said, "did you personally see the deputy mayor's car being inspected?"
"I personally saw it being inspected."
"You personally saw the hood being raised?"
"I did."
"And you'd be willing to swear that a thorough inspection was made of the area under the hood?"
"What do you mean?"
"Did you actually
"Well, I didn't stand around looking over his shoulder, if that's what you mean."
"Where were you, actually, when the deputy mayor's car was being inspected?"
"I was right here."
"On this exact spot?"
"No, I was inside the office there. But I could see out into the garage. There's a glass panel in there."
"And you saw the inspector lifting the hood of the deputy mayor's car?"
"That's right."
"There are two dozen Caddys here. How'd you know that one was the deputy mayor's car?"
"By the license plate. It has DMA on it, and then the number. Same as Mayor Vale's car has MA on it for 'mayor,' and then the number. Same as the …"
"All right, it was clearly his car, and you definitely saw …"
"Look, that guy spent a good half-hour on each car, now don't tell
"Did he spend a half-hour on the deputy mayor's car?"
"Easily."
Meyer sighed. "I guess we'll have to talk to him personally," he said to Kling. He turned again to Coyle. "What was his name, Mr. Coyle?"
"Who?"
"The inspector. The man from Motor Vehicles."
"I don't know."
"He didn't give you his name?" Kling asked.
"He showed me his credentials, and he said he was here to inspect the cars, and that was that."
"What kind of credentials?"
"Oh, printed papers. You know."
"Mr. Coyle," Kling asked, "when was the last time a man from Motor Vehicles came to inspect?"
"This was the first time," Coyle said.
"They've never sent an inspector down before?"
"Never."
Slowly, wearily, Meyer said, "What did this man look like, Mr. Coyle?"
"He was a tall blond guy wearing a hearing aid," Coyle answered.
Fats Donner was a mountainous stool pigeon with a penchant for warm climates and the complexion of an Irish virgin. The complexion, in fact, overreached the boundaries of common definition to extend to every part of Donner's body; he was white all over, so sickly pale that sometimes Willis suspected him of being a junkie. Willis couldn't have cared less. On any given Sunday, a conscientious cop could collar seventy-nine junkies in a half-hour, seventy-eight of whom would be holding narcotics in some quantity. It was hard to come by a good informer, though, and Donner was one of the best around,
Willis was surprised to find him in the city during the coldest March on record. He was not surprised to find him in a room that was suffocatingly hot, with three electric heaters adding their output to the two banging radiators. In the midst of this thermal onslaught, Donner sat in overcoat and gloves, wedged into a stuffed armchair. He was wearing two pairs of woolen socks, and his feet were propped up on the radiator. There was a girl in the room with him. She was perhaps fifteen years old, and she was wearing a flowered bra and bikini panties over which she had put on a silk wrapper. The wrapper was unbelted. The girl's near-naked body showed whenever she moved, but she seemed not to mind the presence of a strange man. She barely glanced at Willis when he came in, and then went about the room straightening up, never looking at either of the men as they whispered together near the window streaming wintry sunlight.
"Who's the girl?" Willis asked.
"My daughter," Donner said, and grinned.
He was not a nice man, Fats Donner, but he was a good stoolie, and criminal detection sometimes made strange bedfellows. It was Willis' guess that the girl was hooking for Donner, a respectable stoolie sometimes being in need of additional income which he can realize, for example, by picking up a little girl straight from Ohio and teaching her what it's all about and then putting her on the street, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio. Willis was not interested in Donner's possible drug habit, nor was Wilis interested in hanging a prostitution rap on the girl, nor in busting Donner as a "male person living on the proceeds of prostitution," Section 1148 of the Penal Law. Willis was interested in taking off his coat and hat and finding out whether or not Donner could give him a line on a man named Dom.
"Dom who?" Donner asked.
"That's all we've got."
"How many Doms you suppose are in this city?" Donner asked. He
turned to the girl, who was puttering around rearranging food in the refrigerator, and said, "Mercy, how many Doms you suppose are in this city?"
"I don't know," Mercy replied without looking at him.
